Peter "Pete" Hill Kagan

Dear Friends of Pete,

We are devastated with this news, and so sorry to have to let you know that we lost Pete yesterday. This past summer, it became heart-breakingly apparent that eighty-three year old Pete would not be able to spend another winter on the prairie. In fact, he has been preparing to move back to Norris after fourteen years of living in his wall tent at Red Cliff. His body was found yesterday laying in the grass next to one of his beloved machines, surrounded by the trees that connected him to this earth.

Pete didn’t talk a lot about his past. What I know is that he left New Jersey and his father’s butcher shop when he was sixteen and headed West, leaving the sour taste of school and too many people behind him. Pete found school difficult and we now know that he had severe dyslexia in a time when it was not well understood. He was one of the smartest people I have ever met.

Despite his trouble reading, Pete was always into a book about the natural world, geology, or Native American history. He loved the First People’s Buffalo Jump and would pick up a book a year in the gift shop. His favorite book was called “Montana Before History, 11,000 Years of Hunter-Gatherers in the Rockies and the Plains” by Douglas MacDonald.

I know Pete had many jobs, adventures, and experiences. To name a few: he travelled with jockeys and trainers, cleaning race horse stalls. He worked underground - mining. He spent time panning for gold. He was a photographer for a time, shooting in the Montana wilderness on his Leica film camera for magazines. He was a logger. And when I met him, he had his business called “Old Timer Excavation,” complete with swag in the form of stickers and baseball caps (even pink ones for the girls).

How I met Pete is a cute story. I needed an excavator to level some ground for a horse round pen. Pete turned up at my house in brand new Carhartt’s and steel-toed boots. When I invited him in, his blue eyes twinkled and he said he wasn’t sure he could bend his knees because his new overalls were so darn stiff. I fell in love. When I brought him to Red Cliff to work on another project, he looked at those cliffs and the prairie above and decided he was just never going to leave. And he never did. He belonged there. He did amazing work for us - and even more for the land. The roads he made (one man, one season, three machines) boast what he called “artsy fartsy” details, like a perfectly placed rock or creatively highlighted tree.

Pete chose to live his life solo. But still, human connections ran deep. He spent quality time with Dasha, Kolya and Jessie - teaching them tracking skills, woodchopping, mechanics, and maintenance and how to water witch (he taught many of you also!). Pete knew how to do everything. He got so tired of watching me struggle to make trails with a shovel, he finally brought me a brand-new Pulaski and then spent an hour teaching me how to keep the blade sharp. It has saved me so many blisters. He lived alone all winter but enjoyed meeting our friends in the summer and would never pass up the chance to teach some city folk how to shoot. He spent many evenings chatting with Vika by the river - they were close friends. He and Loren were also very close, constantly scheming up projects to make the wildlife habitat better and the forest happier.

Pete was extremely proud of his son, Andy, and he beamed when speaking about his daughter-in-law, Becky. But his grandson, Wesley, will always be his pride and joy. Wesley is a brilliant car engineer and has a popular blog which Loren would set up on an iPad for Pete to watch. It was so rare to see Pete in front of a screen, and we loved watching his shoulders shake with laughter at Wesley’s on-line humor.

Despite living in a tent with no internet, Pete was surprisingly well-informed and astute. He cared about humanity, he really did. And his cursing about the state of the world was because he cared. He cared about people, he cared about us, he cared about his family. But mostly, he cared about Mama Nature.

None of us will ever know a person more a part of the natural world than Pete. I cry thinking about the deer and bunnies that hang around his tent, the wild turkeys he loved. They will miss him. I think even the turkey vultures he would shake his fist at (telling them he was not ready to go yet so leave him alone), will miss him.

He talked about the Spirits in the red and orange rock walls. They’re why he was unable to leave Red Cliff and the reason he spent fourteen winters in a wall tent equipped with nothing more than a wood burning stove (he made himself) and an army cot.

You have all been touched (and some even changed) by this remarkable man, and we wanted you to know this sad news. Next time you are at Red Cliff, I know you will feel Pete’s presence. We will all feel his spirit in the red-orange rocks that watch over us - forever keeping us humble, honest, and present.

There is so much I could say about Pete. So much wisdom he passed on to us! But most recently, he taught us how to grow old. Loren and I talk about this golden rule a lot - because of Pete and the way he lived his life - three simple words: Have a Purpose. I will end here with the heaviest heart, but also the relief in knowing that it is exactly how Pete wanted to end his life on this earth. Alone, in beautiful nature, the wind above him, the trees around him. And no worries about a future confined inside of walls.

In Pete’s words: “Goodbye, Young Fella.”